


I Won't Say It (Part II)

by spelling_error



Series: I Won't Say I'm In Love [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Omega Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28425750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spelling_error/pseuds/spelling_error
Summary: **Won't make sense unless you've read the others in the series**Steve came back. Of course, Steve came back. That was never a question.Came back to Nat and Sam. Came back for his shield, the Avengers, the world. Came back and then everything is normal. Normal, but for all the ways that it is not.Steve came back, small, smiling, wearing big, grandpa tortoiseshell glasses and smelling like peppermint.Steve came back as an omega with his pack.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: I Won't Say I'm In Love [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1837513
Comments: 11
Kudos: 28





	I Won't Say It (Part II)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of 6 parts: I Won't Say It, I Won't say I'm..., I Won't Say it (Part II), I Won't Say I'm... (Part II), I Wont Say It (Part III), I Won't Say I'm... (Part III).
> 
> They follow a timeline while also keeping each ending ambiguous until the next installation.
> 
> enjoy!

Tony wakes alone.

It isn’t new. He’s woken up alone to cold sheets and Steve no where to be found before. It is far from the first time. It is far from the last.

**

It starts like this…

Starts with Steve, ends with Steve.

Around, around they go…

Steve came back.

Of course, Steve came back. That was never a question.

Came back to Nat and Sam.

Came back for his shield, the Avengers, the world.

Came back and then everything is normal.

Normal, but for all the ways that it is not.

Steve came back, small, smiling, wearing big, grandpa tortoiseshell glasses and smelling like peppermint.

Steve came back as an omega with his pack.

Steve came back as Steve, and everything is normal but it’s really, really not.

It’s not normal. It’s torture.

It’s torture even before Steve comes back because Tony is the only one who _knew_. There is a certain high that comes from knowing something the Black Widow couldn’t figure out, but it’s short lived at best.

Torture at worst.

_Is this why you’ve been giving Sam the cold shoulder? Because you knew Steve was building a pack and you didn’t want to be a part of it?_

That was the opposite of why Tony had avoided her and Sam as much as he could reasonably get away with.

Tony is pretty sure she walks away knowing that.

_So, is the posturing and arguing over now?_

_Steve is the same insufferable bastard he always was, Romanoff. He’s just pocket sized for a minute._

Steve was the same bright, beautiful, stubborn, righteous, thrilling man that Tony’s been in love with for a year.

_Nothing’s changed, huh?_

_Not a thing._

She walks away grinning like she won something.

No one else seems to want to talk about it. Or, if they do, they have no interest in talking about Steve’s temporary omega status with the alpha who fights with him every time they’re in the field together.

It had never mattered what Steve was or wasn’t to Tony. He loved him anyway. Loved him knowing it was hopeless to do so. Now, Tony wonders if that wasn’t true at all.

It seems to matter in unimaginable quantities what Steve is now.

The weight of it hits Tony like a wall when he walks into the common room and _Steve came back_.

His scent is what really hits Tony like a wall, but that is coupled with the weight of Steve’s status.

His scent is stronger, brighter, overwhelmingly good.

It’s almost better than it had been in Tony’s sheets.

There’s a beta nearby too and Tony knows immediately who it is. He’s an alpha, so it’s not like he usually notices the scent of a beta.

This one is bonded though.

So, Tony knows.

It’s Barnes.

Tony entertains the idea of suiting up and staying that way until this torture is over and he’s subjected to the next stage of agony.

When Steve has the spell reversed.

He doesn’t get the chance.

“Hi, Tony.”

“Welcome ho—Welcome back.”

The tower wasn’t home. Not to anyone. Not even to Tony himself.

They were all just passing through.

There was no family.

No pack.

Well, that wasn’t true. There was a pack.

Just passing through.

Tony can’t help but wonder for how long when he sees the way Barnes clings to Steve, tired and afraid and oh so jaded.

_“Hi. Stark. Tony. Iron Man. Merchant of death. Pleasure.”_

_“Barnes. Bucky. Winter Soldier. Fist of Hydra_. _The pleasure’s mine.”_

Tony grips the cold metal hand and plans a thousand better models that he’ll never let see paper.

But of course, Tony likes the guy. He’s perfect, but what did he expect? Barnes belongs to Steve, of course he’s perfect. Sassy and deadly just like Sam and Nat and Steve himself.

He falls perfectly in line with the team when he’s not wrapped around Steve like an over-grown koala. Barnes and Sam bicker like brothers, and Barnes is protective of Nat like a little sister, correcting her fighting stance in the gym the day after he arrives and somehow he didn’t lose his life.

He’s timidly afraid of Bruce, and depending on the day, he either tries to shield Steve from him, or tries to hide behind the smaller man. He extends a friendly and casual confidence around Clint, and he even talks to Jarvis like a person who is part of the team.

Tony gets his data from Jarvis directly.

He’s been avoiding spending more than a few minutes in the morning with anyone besides the bots.

Steve is calm and patient and smiles more than any of them have ever seen.

Other than that, Steve is exactly the same.

Which is slowly killing Tony.

That’s the torture.

That Steve is exactly the same in this body as he is in the one that will never let them be together.

Steve still puts the team through training everyday, still refuses to let Clint sleep until noon, still makes breakfast for everyone on the weekends. Still keeps the coffee pot full even late into the night when they all know Tony is the only one who’s crawling out of the woodwork wanting it.

Everything is exactly the same.

But for all the parts where it’s not.

When Steve and Tony start arguing, the whole team is suddenly alight with nervous energy, and it only makes Steve more pissed with Tony.

He should want to back down sooner. He should want to protect instead of intimidate.

Steve should want to back down too. He should want to sooth instead of agitate.

Steve still flashes angry blue eyes at him across the breakfast table one morning.

It’s not something they did before. Tony’s pretty sure that Steve couldn’t assume that angry red hue to his eyes before, and Tony never dared in case that was true.

Tony’s seen the glowing blue before though, under different circumstances, silk sheets, and the New York city lights.

Tony lets red bleed into his own vision and asserts that he will not be going to mandatory training that afternoon.

Steve doesn’t back down, which surprises absolutely no one.

The eyes, the growling that follows, it’s not the same. It really is though.

It is exactly the same.

It is because just like always, Steve comes down into the lab and they pretend nothing happened, and they don’t fight at all, and everything is calm and quiet and safe.

Having Steve in the lab like this feels surreal somehow. He can’t help but glance over at the couch in the corner. The place he had Steve laid out and moaning under him, wishing the whole time for Steve to look and smell just the way he does right now.

The memories of having Steve in both his bed and his den seem to fuse and overlap in his mind. Steve in both bodies, both places. It all gets shuffled together.

_“I wanted to talk about Bucky”_

_“What about him?”_

Steve doesn’t answer, and that usually is cause for concern.

The last time Steve didn’t answer a direct question, it was because neither of them wanted to hear the answer. This time Tony suspects he’s just lost his train of thought surrounded by Tony’s scent in here. But it might be both.

Steve sits across the bench, pulling up a rogue computer chair. He starts tidying the screws and wire clippings. Call’s U over with a trash bin and brushes metal scrapings into the bin. He pats the bot’s arm before sending him away.

It’s clear Steve’s not going to talk, but Tony can’t help but need to ask after Barnes.

_“He okay?”_

_“He might be. Some day.”_

Steve smiles a sad, broken smile that Tony’s never seen before and gets up, but he doesn’t leave. He goes over to the pile of junk in the corner and finds the ball that always ends up there and tosses it for U.

Steve also starts mumbling about the mess and cleaning up as he goes, and that’s not a sight Tony’s seen from him in months so he tries not to stare.

DUM-E is useless once he figures out what’s going on, and he keeps looking from Steve to the fire extinguisher to Tony again. Eventually Tony gives in and permits the bot to skirt his duties and show off his new toy to Steve.

Tony does end up staring at Steve the majority of the time he’s there, but Steve’s too busy with the bots and his insistent tidying to notice. Steve’s scent was getting everywhere, touching things in every corner of the space and Tony shouldn’t be as pleased as he is at that, but he is.

Steve does smell stressed though, and there’s a tightness in his body that Tony can recognize even though he’s lost a hundred pounds of muscle. The tension slowly seeps out of him as he cleans up though, as it often does, the neat freak.

Tony thinks there’s tension draining from his own body too watching Steve in this space after so long of them avoiding one another.

Steve pats both the bots on his way out, they never talked about what Steve came to talk about.

It’s fine.

Tony already knew.

He still likes Barnes all the same.

Six different models of advance prothesis make it to paper, but he won’t let any go to fabrication.

Tony can’t escape Steve’s scent now. It makes him crazy, he thinks.

He knows he’s already been crazy for Steve though, so what’s the difference?

He keeps asking himself that: What’s the difference?

Some days the list goes on and on.

Some days there isn’t a god damn thing on it.

The women who cursed Steve isn’t talking, so says Thor on Asgard. The only other sorcerer they know on earth is an entitled alpha douchebag, so it’s nothing but a waiting game.

It’s become clear it will ‘be a while’ before he has time for them.

Tony is projecting, but he doesn’t think Steve minds.

After all, everything is exactly the same.

Steve still gets his own way.

Still interacts with the team.

Still yells at Tony.

It takes exactly one Avengers mission where Steve stays home and barks orders that Tony doesn’t follow through the comms before he demands to be let out on the field again, small and everything.

_I kicked ass in this body for twenty years and that was before contact lenses existed._

He’s not wrong.

Steve is never wrong.

Tony designs a new uniform for Steve that hides his face and scent glands without compromising Steve’s own sense of smell because that is how Steve in this body senses danger, and he is so damn good at it that it makes Tony want to go back in time and tear the heads off every alpha that Steve ever had to fight off.

Tony gives it to Hill and tells her it came from one of their old shield scientists that Tony’s been in contact with.

Absolutely no one believes him.

Steve wears it anyway.

The shield stays hidden somewhere, and instead Tony designs a lightweight carbon fiber version that comes to a devastating point for both offensive and defensive use. It stays firmly attached to his person instead of being tossed around like a frisbee.

The mask is similar to the Winter Soldier, and Tony tells himself that it’s because it’s practical and not anything to do with trying to make positive associations for Barnes.

The navy of the mask that covers Steve’s identity and scent brings out the gold in Steve’s hair and the blue of his eyes.

He models the upper half of the suit after Steve’s brown leather jacket from the war. The one he has tried to replace several times in the twenty-first century.

It is impossible for Steve to miss that fact, because he knows that Tony is the only other living person besides Barnes who’s seen the photograph he was wearing it in.

Steve still wears it anyway.

Tony knows he’s out of line providing this kind of protection to an omega that wasn’t his. Steve knows it too. Barnes knows it, if the way he glares at Tony is anything to go off. Nat knows it too, but she smirks instead.

Steve wears it anyway.

Tony seriously regrets the high waisted tact pants because of how great they make Steve’s ass look, but it’s the same style as his other suit so he doesn’t think he did it on purpose.

But like all things with Steve, Tony doesn’t really know.

Except for all the things he does.

Tony goes into rut the day after he watches Steve battle with some second rate robots in the middle of downtown.

It’s unrelated. Only a few days off schedule.

But it’s really not.

And around and around they go…

_Tony, are you alright? Your scent changed… oh._

_You should go._

_I could stay._

Of course, Steve stays.

It marks three months since the relationship they had built since New York fell apart. Two and a half since Steve left for DC. One and a half since he came back. Three weeks since Steve was _changed_.

It’s a vicious cycle they are trapped in and neither one of them is trying overly hard to get out.

Steve’s not trying at all when the lab door hisses shut behind him once again.

They don’t take it as far as they did in the penthouse when they were drunk, which Tony thinks is ironic because he has even less self-control during his rut than he does drunk, but still, the risk of pregnancy is too high not to think about.

What a hell of a thought.

Wouldn’t that just be the icing on this mess of a cake.

Steve would never forgive him if it happened, Tony knows. Steve is too devoted to fighting to ever let something like that get in the way.

Besides, this body is a temporary one.

Children are not.

So, Tony doesn’t knot Steve this time.

Steve goes down on him instead.

Big, bright eyes stare up at Tony through dark lashes as Steve does his best to draw unimaginable pleasure from his body.

Tony has a fleeting thought when Steve gags and coughs and chokes himself over and over, that Steve has never done this before.

The thought gets lost to everything else though.

It doesn’t matter how few or how many alpha’s Steve’s gotten on his knees for in the past.

What matters is how perfect Steve looks on his knees for _Tony_.

Flushed cheeks, pink lips, big blue and watery eyes.

Freckles, a scar on his stretched wide jaw, a crooked nose.

Steve still has bruised and bloody knuckles when he wraps his fist around the base of Tony’s cock that won’t fit in his mouth.

Steve doesn’t seem to notice. Doesn’t seem to care.

He’s too set on his task, and the whole thing is so undeniably Steve that it’s what makes Tony come undone.

Steve seems surprised by the size of Tony’s knot when it expands in his hand.

Tony can’t help but want to laugh, but instead he throws Steve over the arm of the couch and licks into his dripping cunt while he gets himself off a second time listening to Steve’s high pitched moans of ‘Alpha’ and the taste of that burning sweet peppermint on his tongue.

Tony can’t get the scent, taste or phantom sound of Steve’s moans out of the lab.

It may be because when he wakes up alone, once again, he finds Steve’s shirt is still draped over the back of the couch.

This is torture.

It is no longer a metaphor because Tony feels real pain pounding at his ribcage.

It is a pain unlike any other.

It is a torture so much more efficient than any Tony’s been subjected to.

And he has a lot of experience with torture.

Tony doesn’t leave the lab for four days.

He nearly loses a finger in his aggressive decomposition of several different projects.

Nearly loses a hand starting a new one.

He keeps Steve’s t-shirt balled up under his pillow in the lab and refuses to think about how he sometimes finds himself looking forward to falling asleep knowing that it’s there.

The scent gets weaker every morning.

Fading away slowly just like Steve himself.

Around and around they go…

They don’t talk about it.

They fight about it once.

Steve tries to leave the room without Tony noticing.

_Where are you off to? DC?_

But it’s not a fight.

Steve’s scent immediately sours, burns up and out until it’s dimmed like a suffocating fire.

Steve never runs away from a fight.

He ran away from Tony that day, so he’s at a loss for what to call it.

That horrible, muted, sour version of Steve’s scent stays with him though. Twists him up inside and makes him sick.

After that Tony watches Steve, but he doesn’t dare interact very much anymore.

He watches Steve talk to Coulson and Barton and Hill with a relaxed ease instead of parade rest.

Watches Wilson rest his chin on Steve’s head and get batted away laughing.

Watched Steve stick an ice-cube down the back of Barnes’s shirt and get tossed over the shoulder of the Winter Soldier and spun around until he couldn’t walk straight laughing the whole time.

He watches sunlight reflect off Steve’s hair as the sun sets over the city one evening while the team are all out on the roof and wonders if he looks better like this, or in the twinkling city lights. He’s not sure he could ever decide.

And around and round they go…

They get drunk again.

This time they’re not alone though. The team is there. Tony is uncomfortable.

Someone asks Steve what they all smell like, and he goes around the room with a silly little smile that Tony knows very well now.

He’s seen Steve in nothing but that silly little smile.

_Bucky smells like me, and like home._

_Nat smells like clean laundry on a clothesline._

_Sam smells like damp grass in the morning._

_Clint smells like woodsmoke._

_Bruce smells like hot asphalt after the rain_.

They all laugh, but then Nat asks what Tony smells like, and Steve’s face loses the smile.

Tony’s standing up to leave before he even says the words.

_Bitter._

No one laughs at that but Tony.

He thinks he hears Steve say something else, but he waves goodnight over his shoulder and walks away.

Bitter.

What a perfect way to describe him.

A bitter old man.

Like his father.

At least Tony doesn’t reek of alcohol the way Howard did.

And then around and around they go…

Steve is in heat.

Tony knows it before Steve notices, he thinks.

Steve crawls out of bed past ten, and he’s dressed in fleece pants and a too big sweatshirt waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. The sweatshirt is alpha-Steve sized and familiar, it’s more of a dress on his slight frame now.

Tony can see Barnes’s mark with the way the collar pulls down.

Steve’s the same as he always is in heat.

Tired, chilly, snappish.

Except in all the ways he’s not.

His scent gets stronger and stronger the longer he waits at the coffee maker. It’s not desire, it’s not slick, it’s just Steve.

Tony sits at the table, Steve abandons his place in the coffee que and sits next to him. Brings his bare feet up on the chair with him, rests a slightly flushed cheek to his knees and closes his eyes.

Tony gets up, gets his coffee, goes to the couch in the common room.

Steve gets up, gets his coffee, goes to the couch in the common room.

He never drinks the coffee. Tony has to take it out of his hand when he nods off a few times.

He eventually lays down across the length of the sofa, slyly placing his feet in Tony’s lap.

Tony doesn’t actually notice at first, he’s too busy with Peppers emails about SI.

He doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at all because months and months ago he and Steve used to watch movies together in the penthouse and Steve would always put his much heavier feet in Tony’s lap with a sly little smile and Tony would roll his eyes and rub them as compromise for Tony talking through the whole film.

For a few minutes things feel so domestically normal that he forgets that Steve isn’t an alpha anymore.

Wasn’t that what brought that normality to a screeching halt in the first place? When Tony forgot about Steve being an alpha and fell head over heals in love?

Bruce clears his throat and raises an eyebrow at Tony.

_Go back to bed, Steve_

_In a minute._

A minute turns into an hour and Steve is dead to the world the whole time.

Steve smells so good right now, Tony thinks when he lets his own eyes slip shut. Pre-heat, cuddly, sleepy and soft. It’s the version of Steve that started it all.

Tony knows this isn’t an ending, so he’s perplexed on why they have found themselves back at the beginning all over again.

His thumb rubs gentle circles into the sharp bone of Steve ankle.

Steve snores softly.

Tony must fall asleep because he wakes to voices and the distinct understanding that he should not be where he is right now.

Tony never leaves the lab anymore.

Not unless Steve asks him to.

Tony could argue that Steve’s made the request now, but he knows no one will buy it.

He doesn’t wait for someone to tell Tony he’s out of line. Just slips out from under Steve’s legs and disappears.

There is no part of him that relishes in being the one to leave this time.

Every part of Tony hates it.

The looks he gets tell him he made the right call.

It is exactly the same but for the way Steve forgets to hide their affections.

Objectively Tony knew not to expect Steve to come set up shop in the den the way he did months and months ago. He’s still disappointed when he spends the day alone. He’s still surprised when Jarvis passes on an invitation to movie night in the common room. From Steve.

And around and around they go…

Steve’s scent warms when he see’s Tony.

_Hey… I wasn’t sure you’d come_

_I’m here. Deal with it._

_I will._

Steve smiles.

He’s still in pre-heat, surrounding himself in blankets and people he likes. Not yet irritable. Not yet horny.

Steve is nearly draped over Barnes. Nat and Sam have made a home on the floor leaning on the couch on either side of the other beta’s legs. Steve’s are tucked under himself. The rest of the team are there, Tony’s sure. He doesn’t notice them though.

Steve’s pack is beautiful.

Tony busies himself in the kitchen to give himself time to clear his head.

It doesn’t work.

He ends up with a cup of peppermint tea in his hand instead.

It’s made to Steve’s liking.

A drink Tony made for him through many previous heats and movie nights. No one is supposed to know that though.

Tony feels drunk with Steve’s scent all over again.

He still presses the mug into Steve’s hands wordlessly.

Tony sits on the other side of the couch. Keeps distance between them. Steve won’t leave Barnes’s side anyway.

_Good?_

_Perfect, thanks Tony._

_Whatever, cannibal._

_Hilarious._

_Not at all. It’s a serious crime, Rogers._

Steve’s foot makes its way across the sofa to deliver a gentle kick to go with the small smile Steve flashes over the rim of his cup.

If Tony’s hand finds the omega’s ankle a few moments later… well, that’s probably a much bigger gesture than it appears.

Which is saying something, because it looks pretty damn severe.

Tony’s hand looks rough and large on Steve’s skinny ankle. Pale, with fuzzy blonde hairs that tickle as he rubs his thumb back and forth above the hem of too long sleep pants.

Steve’s skin warms under his touch. He’s cold and clammy everywhere else.

Tony imagines covering more and more of icy skin until Steve is alight with heat the way Tony is always, always alight with it these days.

He wants to know if Steve will sound the same as he did that night now that he’s in heat.

Suddenly all the knowledge Tony has on the omega’s he’s had in heat before abandons him.

He doesn’t care about them.

They aren’t Steve.

Nothing compares to Steve, though. He’s learned that lesson long, long ago.

For the life of him, Tony cannot fathom why he still tries.

_You’re not going to talk through the entire film?_

Steve speaks up again half way through a movie Tony can’t even recall the name of, let alone the plot.

He’s not sure the plot for this hellish story he’s found himself in either.

_You look like you need your beauty rest_.

_As if you yammering doesn’t put me to sleep._

His yawning proves a point. Tony couldn’t say whose.

Tony feels eyes on them in a way Steve is too out of it to understand. Even still, he only pays attention to Barnes. Nat and Sam too, though they are secondary to Steve’s true bonded pack.

He can’t pull his hand away even under scrutiny. It’s not possessive, but Tony doesn’t know what it is.

…And around and around they go.

Steve hits the elevator button for the workshop by mistake when they all make their way back to their own quarters. Barnes has to correct him.

Neither Steve nor Tony offer an explanation.

Tony doesn’t expect Steve to come find him for anything more than sitting on opposite ends of the sofa.

Rut? That was one thing. They had done it before. The precedent had been set.

Heat? That was different.

He just wasn’t sure how.

Because Steve spent all his heats with Tony for almost two years. All but the last three.

But those weren’t heats.

Of course Alpha Steve didn’t go through heat.

Except that he did.

Barnes is obviously aware of that when he barges into Tony’s workshop a few hours later. It’s nearly three in the morning.

Tony, as it was, had been standing at the mouth of the alcove that was home to the couch, his bed, Steve’s nest. The old, lumpy hunk of scent. His and Steve’s. Mostly Tony’s now, as Steve’s shirt had lost most of the omega sweetness.

Tony had been standing there with a blow torch in hand.

He wouldn’t need to think about having Steve here if there was no ‘here’ to be had.

_I don’t suggest lighting my omega’s nest on fire_.

Barnes spoke up from no where.

He was even better at that than Steve.

_You’re mistaken_

Tony can sense how half-hearted his own reply is, but still forces the words out anyway.

It’s not Steve’s nest.

It’s Tony’s den.

These places should not, cannot, overlap.

_How long has he been coming here?_

_A long time._

Tony’s not looking at Barnes. He’s got his eye on the sky-blue shirt peeking out from under the pillow.

It’s silent for a long time.

_He’ll be by soon. He’s already sick of me hovering_.

Tony is too stunned to reply before Barnes is slipping out as silently as he came.

He doesn’t let himself hope. Doesn’t let himself dread.

_I forgot how bad these were_.

Steve voice rasps from the doorway.

_I expect more sympathy from you from now on_.

Tony teases with a lightness he doesn’t feel.

_Oh, I think I’m plenty sympathetic_.

Steve voice is a purr and its suggestive and flirty and Tony has no chance of saying no to it.

Steve’s skin is alite with his heat, and Tony’s reaching to adjust the heat in the room with one hand and catching Steve as he jumps up and wraps his legs around Tony’s waist with the other.

Tony doesn’t ask if anyone knows where Steve is, he knows Steve won’t admit to this.

Neither will Tony when he kisses him like that.

It feels like coming home and being stranded at sea at the same time.

Or coming home to find that the house is on fire.

Steve goes boneless when Tony presses him down into the fabric of the den. He groans out something that sounds a lot like Alpha.

Steve blinks wide eyes at Tony, says his name with an urgency Tony’s never heard before.

_Have you ever… in heat?_

There’s a complicated pass of emotion on Steve’s face

_No._

Steve surges up to kiss the moment away, doesn’t leave space for Tony to ask anything stupid like ‘are you sure’ because it’s Steve Rogers, he’s always sure.

Steve isn’t still. He doesn’t lie there and take like most omegas would. Not that Tony expected him to. Not after all the times they’ve done this.

He traps Tony inside him with his legs around Tony’s hips, bares his throat to Tony in apparent submission, but he pulls Tony’s hair with a too tight grip as if to remind Tony whose body he’s inside of.

Like Tony could possibly forget with the burn of the omega on his tongue.

He doesn’t let his mouth touch Steve’s throat, not willing to hear if Steve will get far enough into the heat of it that he says out loud what his body is already begging for.

He scraps his teeth against Steve’s jaw instead, kisses the scar that lives there now, in this temporary body.

He knots Steve with a condom on and Steve glares at him, body desperate for something he can’t let himself have.

And wasn’t that what this whole mess was? Steve wanting and never having. Tony dragged along for the ride of it?

That’s what it’s starting to feel like.

**

Tony wakes alone.

It isn’t new. He’s woken up alone to cold sheets and Steve no where to be found before. It is far from the first time. It is far from the last.

Tony wakes to the scent of coffee wafting from a steaming mug on the floor, and peppermint on the sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: makes a post about focusing entirely on Bad At What We Do.  
> also me five minutes later, looking thru my 16 WIP's: well this is practically finished, why's it not up yet?!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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